Since those who want to play the game of golf well must invest many hours of practice thereinto, driving ranges have been established so that golfers desiring to practice their tee shot may stand in one location and hit numerous shots without having to retrieve the balls.
Typically, a golfer pays a fee to the owner of a driving range for a bucket containing a predetermined number of golf balls. The bucket is carried to a concrete pad, typically covered with an artificial turf, and the golf balls are removed from the bucket, one at a time, and placed on a tee means that is mounted on the pad. After each ball has been hit, the golfer retrieves another ball from the bucket, places it on the tee, and makes another practice tee shot.
The act of retrieving balls from the bucket requires the golfer to bend over or to kneel or to stoop down. Moreover, the ball must be placed on a tee while the golfer remains in the bent or kneeling or stooped position. Then, the golfer must return to a standing position to make the next shot.
This repeated bending and standing may increase the golfer's fatigue as the driving practice continues. Moreover, the time required to position a new ball on the tee after each shot ensures that emptying a single bucket of balls can take a substantial amount of time.
What is needed, then, is a reliable device that will automatically position a new ball on a tee as soon as a tee shot has been made. If such a device were available, it would eliminate the kneeling, stooping and bending associated with manual ball deployment, would assist in improving the golfer's rhythm and timing, and would shorten the time required to complete a driving range session, thereby increasing the cash flow of the owner of the driving range.
A device intended to fulfill the identified need is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,662,641 to Peyret, Jr. Although the device is operable, it is somewhat expensive to manufacture, has a relatively high power consumption rate because it must generate a high vacuum, and is susceptible to a number of problems that will be mentioned not in denigration of the invention but to indicate some of the limitations sought to be overcome by the present invention. In operation, the prior device fails to pick up an unreasonably high percentage of balls. Of the balls that are picked up, too many of them fall from the tee before the tee attains its vertical position. Moreover, the device loses its vacuum during the last few degrees of travel as the tee approaches its horizontal position, nor can a positive vacuum be assured at any stage of the operation of the device because of the seal design. Additionally, a distractingly high decibel level is produced by the required powerful vacuum motor; such noise disturbs the tranquillity of the practice range.
Since the lip of the tee is a part of the belt that moves the tee, degradation of the tee lip requires replacement of the entire belt. The height of the machine is between eight to nine inches, thereby not meeting the standards of some states, like California, that ban devices of that height if no step is provided. Finally, the device requires outside ball storage.
A device having none of the limitations of the prior devices, if developed, would advance the art.